This invention is related to the poultry industry and, more particularly, to an apparatus for stunning and separating poultry during the stunning process.
In the U.S. and throughout the world, poultry consumption is very large. With the increasing popularity of wings and other parts, the poultry industry is now benefiting from the sale of poultry parts that, in the past, would have been thrown away. However, one of the problems the poultry industry faces is damage to poultry parts during processing, resulting in millions of dollars being unrealized.
In current poultry processing plants, chickens or other poultry are typically hung on a shackle of an inline conveyor system which delivers the chickens to a stun zone where stunners are used to render chickens unconscious. The inline conveyor system positions the chickens in a side by side, closely knit position that allows the chickens to come into contact with each other.
During the stunning process, the chickens move their wings toward their body. Because of the side by side arrangement of the inline conveyor systems, the wings often get caught on chickens residing directly next to the chicken being stunned. As a result, the wings and shoulders of the chickens are damaged.
Different voltages, different currents in the stunner, and increased distances from hanging shackle to hanging shackle on the conveyor systems have all been tried with little or no improvement in reducing the physical damage caused to the poultry during this phase of the processing.
Accordingly, there is a need for a poultry processing apparatus that allows the poultry to be processed while minimizing the amount of physical damage to the poultry.